#RolandMartinUnfiltered - RFK, Jr. grilled, Black Cultural Studies at risk, Contraception Begins at Erection Act, DEI assault

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

1.29.2025 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: RFK Jr. grilled, Black Cultural Studies at risk, Contraception Begins at Erection Act, DEI assault Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced tough questioning about his abortion flip-flop during today's confirmation hearing, where he was scrutinized by congressional Democrats, including Senator Bernie Sanders. Black Cultural Studies courses at HBCUs face uncertainty if a federal judge allows the federal funding freeze to proceed.  We'll speak with the Mississippi state lawmaker who introduced the "Contraception Begins at Erection Act." Ahmaud Arbery's mother took the stand in the trial of the Georgia prosecutor who did not charge the men who killed her son.  And Tiffany Lofin will be here in the studio to discuss MAGA's mission to dismantle diversity. #BlackStarNetwork partner: Fanbasehttps://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.  This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. You should read the Offering Circular (https://bit.ly/3VDPKjD) and Risks (https://bit.ly/3ZQzHl0) related to this offering before investing. Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox  http://www.blackstarnetwork.com The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersilling.org brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, founder and CEO of Fanbase. And right now we're accepting investors in our $17 million round to revolutionize the future of social media. Today, for just $399, you can own 60 shares of stock in Fanbase at $6.65 a share. Go to startengine.com in Fanbase at $6.65 a share. Go to startengine.com slash fanbase and invest today. While the big platforms have grown too massive and disconnected from their users,

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Go to startengine.com slash fanbase and own the future of social media. Black Star Network is here. Oh, no punch! I'm real revolutionary right now. Thank you for being the voice of Black America. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network

and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? It's Tuesday, January 28th, 2025. I'm attorney Robert Petillo. Sit in for Roland Martin tonight. Here's what's coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered,

streaming live on the Black Star Network. Look, we tried to tell you. Welcome to Project 2025. We're seeing the entire Project 2025 agenda being executed by the Trump administration with over 300 executive actions in the last week. Just today, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration's freeze on federal grants and loans, which could total trillions of dollars.

We'll talk about who that freeze will affect and what will happen if it goes into effect on Monday. Also, another executive order aimed at trans military service members may be decided in court. And I remind people, the same laws that protect trans individuals protect African Americans. If the court decides that Donald Trump with an executive order can ban trans people from the military, they could use a similar executive order to ban African Americans or other protected classifications. It's all under the same constitutional scrutiny. So don't say simply because it only applies to other people, it doesn't matter to you. All these cases matter to you. We'll talk more about that later on the show. MAGA attorney generals are demanding that Costco drop its DEI policies. We've seen in recent weeks

and months since this extreme MAGA agenda has gone into place, corporations across the country have gone back on those 2020 promises to help black folks. Remember our corporate partners, our corporate friends? Well, the minute they could drop black folks, they did. Costco stood up to them. We're going to talk about what these MAGA attorney generals are trying to do in order to reverse those policies. Also, in my home state of Georgia, the district attorney who refused to prosecute the three white men who gunned down Ahmaud Arbery is in court facing criminal charges of her own. We'll talk about that later. And in tonight's Marketplace,

we'll hear from the creator of the deodorant and skincare line specifically designed for people with sensitive skin. It's time to bring the funk on Roller Murder Unfiltered, streaming live on the Blackstar Network. Let's go. He's got whatever the piss he's on it Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine And when it breaks, he's right on time

And it's rolling, best belief he's knowing Putting it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling, yeah It's on go, go, go, y'all Yeah, yeah It's rolling Roro, y'all. It's Roland Martin, yeah. Rolling with Roland now.

He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best, you know he's Roland Martin now. Last night, President Trump plunged the country into chaos. Without a shred of warning, the Trump administration announced a halt to virtually all federal funds across the country. In an instant, Donald Trump has shut off billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that directly support states, cities, towns, schools, hospitals, small businesses, and most of all, American families. It's a dagger at the heart of the average American family in red states, in blue states, in cities, in suburbs, in rural areas. It is just outrageous. Just outrageous.

The twice impeached, criminally convicted, felon and chief Donald the Con Trump. A new order could impact billions, if not trillions of dollars of funding allocated to state and local government if it goes. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the war on drugs. We are back in a big way, in a very big way, real people, real perspectives.

This is kind of star studded a little bit, man. We got a Ricky Williams, NFL player, Hasman trophy winner. It's just the compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King,

John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree.

It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersceiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. Back to In Effect on Monday. U.S. District Court Lauren Alley-Khan blocked the action Tuesday afternoon, minutes before it was set to go into effect at 5 p.m. The administrative stay pauses to freeze until Monday. Bobby Kogan, the Senior Director of Federal Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress Progress joins us to discuss who may be affected by this decision.

Bobby, how are you doing? Doing great, Robert. Thanks so much for having me on. Well, thank you so much. Talk a little bit about who exactly this order, this executive order would impact if it was to go into effect on Monday. Sure. So it is, they say it's not Medicare, it's not Social Security, and it's not payments that go directly to individuals. So that means not something like SSI and not something like veterans' compensation. But it's much of the rest of the aid that the United States government

gives. That's stuff like Section 8 housing. That's stuff like LIHEAP. That's stuff like Title I education grants. That's stuff like IDEA education grants for kids with disabilities. It's most of the things that people actually are relying on. Now, the asterisk here is that after kind of spelling out over 2,000 budget accounts, internally, externally, the Trump administration walked it all back. And so their internal messaging implies that it's lots and lots and lots and lots of programs that Americans rely on, and their external messaging implies that it's nothing. And so, as we've seen before, when President Trump was running for office, he said, I know nothing about Project 2025. I've heard nothing about Project 2025. I don't know who

these people are or what's happening. But this is directly out of Project 2025. So, should we believe their external messaging that we saw at the White House briefing today, or believe the internal documents which truly say they want to gut these federal programs? I think we should believe the internal messaging. If you look at the budget request that Trump made when he was president last time, he called to eviscerate the social safety net. He called to cut SNAP in quarter. He called to cut Section 8 in third. He called to cut Medicaid in half, right?

So they clearly want to do this. Whether their walkback is all a show or they got scared and wanted to lie about their initial policy, I think, is a different thing. But it's very, very, very clear that externally they were feeling the heat. But to your point, I think that we should assume—and we had—you know, there were reports today of folks—of states logging in and not being able to get their Medicaid money for the upcoming quarter. There were pauses on Head Start grants and that sort of stuff.

So it's very clear that they were working towards pausing huge amounts of the federal government. And what we've seen thus far with these 300 executive orders plus that are still coming down the pipelines is it seems that they're attempting to flood the zone, that if you throw enough crazy things out there minute by minute, hour by hour, there will not be enough money for lawyers to challenge every single one of these executive orders in court. There will not be the scrutiny to be able to dive into each of these things, because before you get through one, another crazy thing is going on. What can people actually do to fight back against these orders, and what does this administrative stay mean?

Yeah, I think that that's astute, right? I mean, the common theme of the Trump administration, the thing that runs through all of it is chaos for, you know, for the American public. I'm not sure what an individual can do, per se, that if there are missed payments, any of the agencies or states or facilities that misses the payments will know, and then they will sue. And that will presumably put another stay, right? So you referenced the federal judge today who put a pause on it, but just through Monday. That's kind of fortuitous for the Trump administration for stays, because February 1st, the beginning of the month, would have been a huge period of a lot of federal outweighs. So you'll have to wait for someone to get standing due to a missed payment, and then

that person can sue. I would just say, if you're listening and you are not getting a benefit you are supposed to get right now, I strongly encourage you to talk to your local reps and also to your district offices for your federal reps, because right now, part of the issue is it's very difficult to understand what is going on. The chaos, the uncertainty is a feature rather than a bug. And from a constitutional perspective, Chuck Schumer said it earlier, Congress has the power of the purse strings. When the president takes his oath of office, he says, he raises his right hand and says, I will support and defend the Constitution. I will dutifully carry out the edicts of Congress.

Does the president have the power, does he have the ability to simply say, I'm not going to distribute money, which has already been passed by the Congress, signed into law, and put forward? No, he does not. If the president doesn't like this spending, there's actually a special path that's filibuster-proof. It's easier to pass than a normal bill to help rescind and peel back unused funds. And if a president doesn't like a law, you can try to change the law. But what you're not allowed to do is simply ignore a law that you don't like.

What you're not allowed to do is just not carry it out. Now, I will quickly say there are paths to legally pause spending, but President Trump did not take those. He didn't take them when he was in office in 2019 and illegally paused Ukraine funding, and he didn't take them this time, right? So what we see is a direct willingness to flagrantly violate our spending laws. And on that point, he knows he can't do this. He knows he can't suspend the 14th Amendment

when it comes to birthright citizenship. He knows he can't do many of these things. But what is the plan for people and for parties and groups to really fight back against this, besides paying lawyers absorbent fees to go before federal courts? And then, as a codicil, we have so many judges that President Trump appointed. Is there a chance that a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court,

if it gets that far, may just decide to give him these additional powers? I would be skeptical if the Impoundment Control Act is overturned. What President Trump is pushing is radical even for him. Now, of course, I say that, and then every week he comes out with another even more radical executive order. But the argument behind what he is trying to say is that spending and only spending laws are optional, and that Congress may not bind the president to spend. And what that would mean is that Social Security is unconstitutional.

What that would mean is Medicaid is unconstitutional. What that would mean is Medicare is unconstitutional. It would mean that when you are owed your Social Security check, the president always has the option to say, no, I don't feel like giving it to you. That is a really radical legal belief, and that is what has to kind of undergird the idea that the president is always able to impound, right? He argues that the president has inherent impoundment authority, and that has to mean that the president can't bind any spending.

I can't imagine the Supreme Court saying, all of our entitlement law, all of our spending law is unconstitutional. That is a bridge very far. Now, will some Supreme Court justices say that? I'm sure some will. But maybe I'm too naive here, but I don't think that we will see it overturned. I agree. And, look, I want to be as optimistic as you, but I think we all said Roe was settled law. I think we all thought that the North Carolina and the Harvard cases on schools, that that was settled law and affirmative action.

So for people who are looking at this and trying to find out what are the steps going forward, can you talk a little bit about what happens if this administrative stay fails on Monday and this goes into effect? What will happen to individuals who are depending on many of these services like Meals on Wheels and other government programs? Yeah. So by virtue of it starting back up on the third rather than the first, there will be kind of a little bit of respite. Basically, they're targeting funds that get administered by other things. The federal government will give money to a state or to an authority or to a facility, and then they will carry it out. And so it's not that they can't continue to give out funds. It's that the federal government may not give out any more.

So what we're looking at is when the federal government would miss the timing of a payment. Many payments come out at the beginning of the month. Some come out quarterly. Some come out annually. Some come out when grants are due. So we are looking for something who's—we're looking—we're targeting something for when a payment ought to have gone out, but now because of this illegal order is not able to go out. And so it will—we will only start to see the effect when kind of that first missed payment happens.

And so it'll be program by program, right? Eventually, if this were to go on long enough, eventually this stops huge swaths of the federal government. But basically, it would start slow, and beginning of every month would be one thing. And then while some of these facilities have cash reserves, so even if they missed a federal payment, they'd be able to keep going for days, weeks. But the longer this goes on, that's when you start to see child care facilities and preschool facilities, that's when you start to see them literally shut down. That's when you start to see people being evicted from their homes because they're missing all of their Section 8

payments and can no longer meet their rent. And so with the new press secretary went into great detail to talk about the programs that wouldn't be cut or wouldn't be affected by this spending freeze. What programs specifically will be affected so that people will have a better understanding? We talked about Meals on Wheels. We talked about Section 8. But what are some things where people are going to tangibly feel the effects of this? Yeah. So just to say the press secretary is taking the public view that, oh, we didn't mean anything that we said. So that's where we have to, you know, if you take the press secretary's view, then we're only talking about some of the green energy things and the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law,

and we're only talking about those. That's what they said publicly. What they said privately is that it is much larger. So for the tangible effects for people, that would be your free or cheap preschool is now closed, and you are no longer able to get that. That would be your school lunch that you get from school. There's no more funding for the school from the federal government. So maybe you just don't get that because maybe the school can no longer provide it and the state and your local school district can no longer provide it, right? So it kind of depends on whether private entities are able to step in and fill the void. But the tangible effects, if this goes on long enough and is as broad as they implied it would be and that their private

messaging says it would be, It is stuff like your nutrition. It is stuff like your education. It is some of your health care, your community health centers and stuff like that. And it is some of your housing. And so before we run out of time, where can people get more information on this and really keep up with what's going on? Because we've seen Facebook has got rid of fat checking. Twitter has got rid of fat checking. There's so much misinformation coming out, disinformation.

We've got the press secretary who apparently now can just pick the media that they want to have at press conferences. I don't know how many people saw that earlier, but they announced that they will now be having podcasters, bloggers, conspiracy theorists be in the White House press corps. So it's very difficult to discern what the actual information is and how exactly we can address it. Where can people get accurate information from and what can people do to fight back? I think that's the biggest concern folks have. Sure. I put out a paper, or it should be out in minutes if it's not already. It's my attempt at trying to explain all of this. I would just say there's been tons of reporting from The Washington Post and The New York Times, from Politico, from lots of groups that are trying to lift it up. The difficulty is just no one really knows what's happening.

In terms of what you can do to fight back, this is—it's going to sound like cold comfort, but I truly, truly think the best thing that we can be doing is, to the extent that we are missing a payment that we know be doing is to the extent that we are missing a payment that we know we are supposed to get, we should be flagging that for journalists, for our local elected representatives or whatever. Right now, the biggest advantage that the Republican, that Trump has, the Trump administration has, is the chaos. No one really knows what's happening. And anytime we say this is happening, they say, no, it's not. So to the extent that you are actually experiencing something, getting that to someone who can help elevate it is actually incredibly, incredibly helpful.

And just last question, we talked a lot about the fact that this is the real Project 2025 coming to fruition. This is what we, as Roland would say, we tried to tell you that this was what was going to happen. For the people who are out there saying, well, Kamala is Indian and not black enough, well, now you might not have Meals on Wheels and Section 8 housing. But with that, what are the next Project 2025 executive orders that you think might be coming down the pipes? Well, speaking—I'm a budget person, so speaking just in my issue area, I expect to see even broader impoundment. I expect to see even broader kind of—you know, they've been doing trial balloons. On day one, they did kind of pretty targeted what they thought would be politically advantageous illegal pauses in spending.

And that also comes straight from Project 2025, where they said, we're not going to spend on the stuff that we don't like. We're just going to have it follow the president's policy. They did trial balloons, and then they did this big one, and then they immediately walked it back. I expect to see a lot more of that coming through. But again, that's just my issue area. And so for the other stuff, I don't feel super comfortable opining. Well, I think it's something we have to watch. And if they are able to take the power of the purse string away from Congress and move it into the executive, we are fundamentally in a different form of government than what our founders said.

I grew up with conservatives saying we want less power in the executive. We want small government. We want power to be more democratically with the Congress and with the people. And as soon as they get into power, all that goes out the window. I tell people all the time, don't listen to the flowery language. Watch the actions that people are taking. Thank you so much, Bobby, for joining us. How can people follow you on social media? Thanks so much for having me. I'm on Blue Sky, and it is B-B-K-O-G-A-N. And for now, I'm still on the bad site, but mostly I'm on Blue Sky.

All right, Bobby Hogan from the Center for American Progress. All right. We'll be back after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network. What's up, y'all? Look, fan base is more than a platform. It's a movement to empower creators, offering a unique opportunity for everyday people to invest in Black-owned tech, infrastructure, and help shape the future of social media. Investing in technology is essential for creating long-term wealth and influence in the digital age. The Black community must not only consume tech, we must own it. Discover how equity crowdfunding can serve as a powerful tool

for funding Black businesses, allowing entrepreneurs to raise capital directly through their community, through the jobs ad. Next on The Black Table with me, Greg Carr. There's a lot of talk about the inevitability of another civil war in this country. But on our next show, we'll talk to a noted author and scholar who says we're actually in the middle of one right now. In fact, Steve Phillips says the first one that started back in 1861, well, it never ended. People carrying the Confederate flag, wearing sweatshirts saying MAGA Civil War, January 6th,, stormed U.S. Capitol, hunted down the country's elected officials,

built the gallows for the Vice President of the United States, and to block the peaceful transfer of power within this country. On the next Black Table, here on the Black Star Network. Now that Roland Martin is willing to give me the blueprint. Hey, Saraz. I need to go to Tyler Perry and get another blueprint because I need some green money. The only way I can do what I'm doing, I need to make some money. So you'll see me working with Roland.

Matter of fact, it's the Roland Martin and Sheryl Underwood Show. Well, it shouldn't be the Sheryl Underwood Show and the Roland Martin Show. But whatever show it's going to be, it's going to be good. Welcome back. Let's go to our panel. Today we're joined by Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali, former senior advisor for environmental justice at the EPA from Washington, D.C. Benjamin Dixon, pastor, political commentator, and author of God is Not a Republican out of my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. And also Dr. Larry J. Walker, assistant professor at the University of Central Florida, joining us tomorrow.

I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley

comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersceiling.org.

Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. Orlando, Florida. So we got to work our way through some of these executive orders. I'm going to start with you, Mustafa. You know, you worked in the environmental protection. You are an expert in these things. And these are the exact programs that he's going after. What do you think it says that he is attacking these particular programs when he said he was running to lower the price of eggs and milk?

Well, what it says is that he's willing to put profit over people. He's willing to actually put our most vulnerable communities in the crosshairs of these executive orders, of taking these needed resources away from communities that have always been under-resourced. And it's just saying that whether it is a matter of you getting sick or losing your life, it is not of great concern to what's going on. I mean, I think we got to also give a shout out to Judge Leo Kahn for, you know, the state that's currently going on and making sure that giving people enough time to actually take a quick breath so that folks don't just get caught up in the chaos. But we know that communities all across the country, when you look at what they're actually doing here, you can think about Flint, Michigan, because they're talking about

taking dollars away from water infrastructure, or Jackson, Mississippi, or a number of other communities out there that are literally, in many instances, just hanging on when it comes to what they're drinking or what they're breathing. So we have a responsibility to, one, stay focused, to make sure, as Bobby shared with us earlier, that we're calling out if resources are not making it to the places and spaces they're supposed to and when they're supposed to. And then the most important thing also is that making sure that we are elevating the message, the stories about how people are being impacted across the country based upon these decisions. We got $1.1 trillion in grants that are out there, usually on a yearly basis,

and $750 billion in contracts. And when you start playing around like this, we know who's going to be hit first and worst, but you also are going to create all kinds of really just devastating impacts to both working class folks, the middle class, and of course, our most vulnerable. And Dr. Walker, I want to bring you on this conversation because we've been telling people about the dangers of Project 2025 for nearly two years. We've had specials on it, town halls. We've sent out mailers, conversations.

People seem to be completely surprised that Donald Trump is doing exactly what he said he was going to do. So what do you think has to happen for people to understand that this is the Project 2025 agenda and then start formulating plans on how to fight back against it? Yeah, I think this is a really important point. You're right. Roland talked about this a great deal throughout the United States, among other people who care passionately about how various policy issues impact the Black community.

And so a lot of this is too late, right? You talked about in your previous guest about what kind of entities are in place to kind of fight back against some of these policy changes. But I think there are a couple of things that we need to consider based on the election and where we are right now, is that what you're seeing is an erosion of the three branches of government. You know, we talk about executive, judiciary and legislative. What you're seeing is, you know, undercutting the power of, you know, legislative and judicial branches and strengthening the power of the executive branch. Also, what we're seeing here is essentially when it comes to the federal government, you know, eliminating it as the

elimination of the administrative state. And I think people need to understand that. And that's what we're seeing today in terms of people don't consider how the federal government impacts their lives with billions and trillions of dollars on a daily basis. But now you're beginning to find out this is destroying the federal government as an administrative state, as in terms of what's been appropriated in this case by Congress, and now holding that money back. And the long-term impact is going to—short and long-term impact is going to have on American citizens and also the U.S. economy. Because now we're talking about eggs. Eliminating Head Start and various other programs, you know, or at least pausing it will prevent parents, et cetera, from going to work and stimulating the economy.

So this is about a shock and awe. For those of us who not only study U.S. history but world history, this playbook has already been written over the decades. And so if you understand how authoritarianism works, you know, understand that shock and all is all part of a multiple step process. In addition, we talked about Project 2025. They've literally had years, and the Heritage Foundation has been working on this for decades, to lay out a plan if we ever become in power with the right person in place. And so now, once again, the dismantling of the federal government as an administrative state has begun. So it's not about whether systems are buckling.

They've already buckled. And Pastor Dixon, on that point about studying history and studying how authoritarian governments rise, I thought about this earlier. If you think back to Greek philosophy, you had Polybius who talked about the anachronisms, the decay of society, the decay of governments. Where you have a democracy, then that descends into anarchy. You have an aristocracy that descends into oligarchy. And then you have what we have now, which is simply mob rule, where

you have a combination of rich tech bro corporate interests coming together at a perfect Kairos moment with the conservative movement, which has been trying to push these things for decades. What do we need to put together on our side? I think we have to be more solutions oriented. We can only put out so many press releases and cry so much. What do we need to do on our side to organize the same way that the

Heritage Foundation did from the minute that the ink was dry on the civil rights of the 1964, these groups started figuring out ways to turn that clock back. Who's doing that planning for us? We need to have an all-hands-on-deck solution, and it requires every one of us, every one of your listeners, every viewer, we need to be able to move in a concerted action. That includes a general strike. That means a consumer strike. We need to withhold our dollars. We need to do far more than just one boycott. We need to shut this down, because corporations are comfortable with the idea that we will still consume, even though we're being crushed by the decisions that are being made by the Trump administration.

They assume that we're still going to go to the store. They assume that we're still going to go to the store. They assume that we're still going to buy, buy, buy, which is what we normally do. And if they can count on that, then they have no problem continuing to crush us. They also have a second plan, which is to absorb as much as they can without consumption, because they want to weaken us. We must absolutely respond. I don't know personally whether or not we should respond in the streets like we normally do with massive protests, because they're waiting for that. Donald Trump has a

commander, or rather he has a secretary of defense that is willing to unleash the military on us in the streets. But so I think we need to respond in kind in terms of withholding our dollars at every possibility, every possible chance that we can, because we see right now that they mean business. And if anybody didn't believe it before, they should honestly see it right now. What they intend on doing is crushing the government to the point where we are out here helpless without anyone to help us at all. And if people can't see that at this point, I'm not sure how to help them see it. Well, I think what these people realize that here's the foundation, these other conservative

groups, this is their one shot. They're not going to get another bite of the apple. They are unleashing everything they can at the beginning to make sure that they're doing the spaghetti method. They're throwing all this stuff at the wall. Half of it will probably get struck down by the courts, but the half that stays will reshape our government for the entire future of our country. Pursuant to that, on Monday, the twice-impeached, criminally convicted felon-in-chief who never served a day in the military signed multiple executive orders that could have a significant consequence on our armed services. These directives call for the extensive changes in militaries affecting troops who were discharged

years ago during the COVID-19 vaccine mandates, eliminating policies and programs that deal with race, gender, sex, and other things, quote unquote, for merit, and also an executive order restoring America's fighting force, eliminates race-based and sex-based discrimination within the armed forces for the United States. Trump also claimed that the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion had corrupted the military and stated that this approach would no longer be in effect during his administration. His executive order reinstated a policy from his first term banning transgender individuals

from serving in the military. This order rescinds a measure put in place by former President Biden, which allowed transgender people to enlist and receive health coverage for gender-affirming care. On Tuesday, two national LGBTQIAPK-plus advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging the executive order. And on behalf of six active transgender members and two prospective service members, the group argued that the ban violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment. So, look, I want to bring you all back in here because let's think about what he is doing. When they say that we are getting rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs,

he's not saying for those frontline troops, black folks, y'all can still be in the infantry. Latinos, y'all can still, you know, go out there and look for the landmines and get shot with the infantry. Latinos, y'all can still go out there and look for the land mines and get shot with the bullets. But when it comes to the leadership of these organizations, he wants it to be a 1950s version of the United States military where you have the madmen at the top and the black and brown people at the bottom with no chance of advancing. And even on this order with regards to transgender individuals, as I said at the top of the show, the same laws, if they're allowed to stand to discriminate against transgender people today,

can be used to discriminate against African Americans tomorrow. Mustafa, what do you think is the impetus behind these things? Well, you know, first of all, I'm thinking about the words of Dr. King when he said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

And that's meant to all the folks who often forget, YOU KNOW, THAT WHEN WE ALLOW ONE GROUP TO BE ATTACKED, THEN THERE IS A NEXT AND A NEXT AND A NEXT THAT THEY ARE COMING FOR. SO WE SHOULD JUST BE MINDFUL OF THAT. YOU KNOW, THE GAME THAT THEY ARE PLAYING IS REALLY ONE ABOUT MAKING SURE THAT ALL THE AMAZING GIFTS, ESPECIALLY THAT BLACK FOLKS HAVE AND OTH others, you know, are not brought forward

in leadership. We understand that when you have diverse leadership, you have a stronger organization, whether we're talking about a nonprofit, we're talking about a corporation, or we're talking about the military. When we look at, you know, just the other day, so many of us were making sure that we were lifting up the Tuskegee Airmen, making sure that people didn't know about not only how amazing they were, you know, as Air Force pilots and everyone else who helped to support that, but that their story was often, you know, kind of hidden, if you will. And that is because they didn't want folks to know, you know, how amazing they were and also, you know, how they

were just excellent at what they did. So when you're able to strip away the ability for folks to be able to move up through the ranks, then you can also bring in those old adages that they're not smart enough or that they don't have the technical skills that are so critical for these types of positions. So the game is to break down the civil rights infrastructure, to break down diversity, equity, inclusion infrastructure. And then we should also call out the fact that even though DEI is so incredibly important, that we haven't always been the beneficiaries of that. We know that white women in many instances have been able to ride that horse to the top in many organizations. By no means do I not want folks to be able to have, you know, an equal opportunity to be able to be successful. But we know that we are the ones who have carried the burden. We're the ones, you know,

who had to blaze these trails. And we know that we also are the ones who should be able to reap the benefits of everything that we put into this. And Pastor, on that same point, the Republicans who were able to properly demonize DEI, CRT, the same way that BLM, if you make something an acronym, it makes it scary to people who don't know what's going on. And it's hard to say, I'm against diversity, I'm against equity, I'm against inclusion, but it's easy to say the DEI means did not earn it and brand it that way.

Why do you think so many people still right now do not understand that these programs are in large part what was able to help build the black middle class, build our officer corps and our military, build these corporations up where they actually have black folks in the front door and not just sitting by the door taking tickets, taking coats. Why have we lost the messaging war on this? Well, I think you already nailed it, right? We lost the messaging war on it in the first place. One, because we did not have a significant enough investment in media. Roland Martin talks about that on a regular basis, particularly black media. We didn't have a response to the thousands of hours that conservatives have put into their own media infrastructure. That's number one. But then number two,

it's so easy to divide us. It is extremely easy to divide us. And so there are people who are going to support Donald Trump because this particular order is targeting the transgender community. And what we have seen throughout history is what we're seeing right now, is if you can find a group that can get people to hate them, then it doesn't matter how far down the totem pole that they are. If you can get Black people to oppose this or to support this, rather, because it's a transgender community, then it becomes imminently easier for them to do that to us, just like if you can get Black folks to start supporting ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and start calling the snitch line

and getting that bounty because they despise immigrants all of a sudden. It becomes imminently easier for them to do that to us on the backside. And Donald Trump knows this. If they're intelligent about anything else, they are extremely aware of how to divide and conquer, and we're living in that reality right now. And before we go to break, Dr. Walker, talk about a little bit how they were able to separate black folks from these other minority groups. We saw this in Chicago where you have black folks calling the cops on Latinos who they thought might be illegal. You have black people supporting the anti-trans bans and why don't like transgenders, but not understanding that these same things will affect us directly.

Yeah. You know, I think that, you know, there's a lot of, we talk about misinformation, right? You know, propaganda war. We've lost the propaganda war. And as it relates to the black community, some of the examples you provided is a lot of this misinformation, propaganda has, and we know going back from the first Trump campaign, we know that Russia and a lot of, we have to talk about this in terms of how they purposely spread that, you know, misinformation in the Black community. And that continued through the, you know, the Biden and then in the next election after the, you know, the Biden, you know, first Biden administration. So the Black community, in terms of all this misinformation that is spread throughout our

community regarding groups with similar challenging experiences,, you know, bought into drinking the Kool-Aid, so to speak, as we say in the Black community, but to our own detriment. And so the idea historically when it comes to civil rights, you know, fighting for civil rights meant that everyone has to kind of sit at the table. And when you bring constituents together, you know, from the Latino community, Asian American, Pacific Islander community, et cetera, and Blackencies together, you know, from Latino, Latino community, Asian American, Pacific Islander community, et cetera, and Black community together, we know when we're... I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer

will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back.

In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-stud on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug

thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive.

But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at tearthepaperceiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. You're likely to be successful overall.

But you have an erosion of that, and now we're in the position we're in today. And look, I tell people that if you take rights away from one group it ain't but so long until it's going to come back to you we're going to talk more about this after the break you're watching Rolling Modern Unfiltered streaming live on the Blackstar Network we'll be right back Hello I'm Isaac Hayes III founder and CEO of Fanbase

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Invest now. Invest for yourself and your future. Go to startengine.com slash Fanbase and own the future of social media. What's up? It's Tammy Roman. Hey, it's John Murray, the executive producer of the new Sherri Shepherd talk show. It's me, Sherri Shepherd, and you know what you're watching, Roland Martin Unfiltered. Welcome back. The Justice Department has fired more than a dozen employees who worked on criminal prosecutions of the twice-impeached, criminally convicted, felon-in-chief. If you look at what's going on from January 6th, this is very clearly retribution against lawyers who work for special counsel Jack Smith's team. And this is the latest sign of an upheaval inside the Justice Department.

It reflects the administration's determination to purge the government of workers who he perceived to be disloyal to the orange one. Remember when we said Project 2025 said they were going to fire between 50,000 and 200,000 federal employees, they're doing it. The felony chief granted pardons to more than 1,500 individuals connected to the January 6th events, including some who assaulted police officers just hours after his all right and so let's bring the panel in on this conversation uh dr dixon i want to i want to start with you on this what do you think happens if we give the president this unilateral power to circumvent the civil service act to circumvent labor laws and simply fire anybody within the federal government who's not an ideological lockstep with them how is this different than the Civil Service Act, to circumvent labor laws, and simply fire anybody within the federal government who's not an ideological lockstep with them. How is this different than McCarthyism?

Oh, it's, well, it's McCarthyism on crack, right? It's on steroids. It's the ability to put in loyalists. It's the ability to completely strip down the administrative state and create a scenario where you must swear allegiance to Donald Trump. And sadly, there are millions of people across this country who have already bowed down before that particular fatted calf. And so we have a serious problem in front of us. We have to see if, as a democracy, whether or not we can survive all of this madness for the next two years and get in a House of Representatives and a Senate that can actually hold them accountable. But it's really a touch-and-go situation, because even if, even when, not if, even when we take back power in the midterms, the truth of the matter is that so much damage is going to be done between now and then if we

are not able to be resilient and to withstand it, both in terms of the institutions and the structures and as individuals who are going to be suffering as a result of this, then it really won't matter as much. So we need to focus both on resilience as well as taking back power in 2026. And Dr. Walker, we've seen he's firing the inspector generals. He's firing Justice Department officials. He's firing literally anybody who is in diversity, equity and inclusion, including, quote unquote, secret diversity, equity, and inclusion, including, quote-unquote, secret diversity, equity, inclusion programs. He's saying that if you know somebody doing diversity, equity, and inclusion, if you don't snitch on them, you will be fired also.

He campaigned on, I want to make sure that we make eggs cheaper. And when he got in the door, he immediately launched this extreme agenda. When people say, how exactly can we fight back when we don't have control of the House, we don't have control of the Senate? Donald Trump has already appointed a majority on the Supreme Court, and Sotomayor appears to be in poor health. He's appointed hundreds of circuit court judges.

How do you stop people from becoming hopeless in this situation? Yeah, so I think that we have to understand that what's happening here is an attempt to dismantle or reverse this—the Great Society program's civil rights laws of the 1960s. So I guess, you know, it's like back in the day, we say castor oil tastes nasty, and you had to still take it sometimes with family members. I have some, you know, uncomfortable truths for people watching this.

This is going to hurt, right? There are going to be significant setbacks as it relates to civil rights, and we're already seeing that. This is the very beginning of that. So I want to be clear about that. There are—you know, it's going to be a challenge. But you also have to understand we have to organize in terms of focusing on economic and political social disruption. Obviously, some of the lessons we learned from the time of the Civil War, fighting for equal rights for the last several decades. But then also, we have to understand that as it relates to what I could describe as the 3M era, misogyny, misinformation, and mismanagement.

So we have to understand that we can still apply some of those lessons learned from, like I said, economic, political, and social disruption. But for a new age, particularly, like I said, and how do we battle misinformation, particularly in the black community, other minoritized communities. But we're in it right now, and there's significant challenges. And look, we're two weeks, not even two weeks into the next administration, and we've got several more years to go. And so the fact of the matter is, what does that mean? So that means collectively we need to come together as a community along with other

minoritized groups, and we need to come up with a comprehensive plan in terms of how we're going to survive this new nadir, because we're in it now, but we have to make sure we have, once again, we have a clear and comprehensive plan on how to respond. And Mustafa,

just piggybacking off that point, this morning I was on the train and I was listening to a debate between Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin from back in the Johnson administration, to work our way into the great society, to advance socially, to increase our ability to vote, to make sure that we are first-class citizens, not second-class citizens as we were at that time. And Brother Malcolm made the argument that we need to be working on independence and self-determination, that as long as you are within a system, that you will always be subject to the system. And now as we're seeing the conditions of our community where so many people are dependent on Section 8,

which might be gone on Monday. There are so many people who are dependent on Meals on Wheels, might be gone on Monday. There are people who are dependent on early childhood education, free lunch programs, Head Start programs, that could be gone by Monday. What do you say to people who say, well, maybe this is a time where we start concentrating on the concept of black nationalism and how we can build our own communities within this community so we in the future, the next time this happens,

we will have some fallback where we can depend on ourselves and not simply have to depend on the government. Well, you know, the words of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, continue to ring true today. I mean, it has to be about community. It has to be about each of us supporting each other. You know, when we talk about whether it is child care or education, you know, for decades upon decades upon decades, we used to make sure that we were also educating our children to make sure that our stories and that our contributions were a part of reading and math and science.

You know, when we talk about the opportunities around housing, we used to come together and help each other build houses or we used to make sure that families were still together because we were living in the same buildings and those types of things. So when you hear the words of Malcolm X, there's a lot of truth that's in there because we see other groups who stay close and how they are able to, one, play a role, and the other things that are necessary around making sure that laws are in place and making sure that resources that are part of our tax bases are actually coming back to our community so that's definitely important but the other part that's more for me critically important is to make sure that we are following you know whether it is the lessons of the Black Panther Party or the lessons of those who are, you know,

who follow some of the traditional African ways of doing business and of living and culture or the culture of our own people right here in the United States for hundreds of years of self-sufficiency and making sure that we are lifting each other up. So, you know, we can do both, but we can't also just forget about where we come from and how we were able to not just survive, because in many places, in many locations, we were actually thriving. And we understood that when we thrived, you know, we saw some of the things that happened because people were jealous of the success that we were able to pull together. And Dr. Walker, you know, Mustafa makes a great point. When we see these cuts to DEI,

I think people need to realize they're not cutting these programs because they didn't work. They're cutting these programs because they work too well. They're cutting these programs because they started having to compete with black and brown people who are smarter than them, who are harder working than them, who had a better knowledge base than them,

and all they needed was an opportunity. And once we got in there and started running circles around them, who are harder working than them, who had a better knowledge base than him and all they needed was an opportunity. And once we got in there and started running circles around them, as most deaf said, you start keeping pace, they start switching up the tempo. So instead of working on making themselves better, building up their communities better, getting fathers back into the home and these white communities, not having so many people on methamphetamines and all these other drugs and the opioid epidemic, they said, well, let's just take opportunities away from other people so we won't have to compete as much.

How do we as a community understand and get into this mindset of we can no longer allow other people to dictate whether or not we have opportunities. We have to create those opportunities for ourselves because as we saw, you can have an executive order signed by LBJ in 1965. It can be undone with a strike of a pen, and we cannot leave our communities that vulnerable again. It's a very important question. I think a few things we're going to see is I think we're going, this is going to force us, not to say we haven't already, this is going to, from the black community, in terms of a continued

increased investment in black institutions, whether you talk about HBCUs or freedom schools or various other things that we've utilized in the past, it's going to require utilizing our resources to invest in these things and where institutions and where we invest in black youth and adolescents and young adults. That's going to be critical in terms of where we invest in black youth and adolescents and young adults. That's going to be critical in terms of where we are right now, because I made the point about economic, political and social disruption. It will allow us to create, you know, not only in terms of, you know, strengthening intellectual wealth and political and social wealth, but create another generation of those economically who have the money to reinvest in our communities. But I think the other thing to keep in mind is that, you know, when we talk about, you know, other groups in envy, that is as old, tail as old as America itself. And so we've seen this,

you know, whether we go back and talk about the Tea Party or birtherism, some of these other issues, this has been, you know, where we are are today if you, once again, if you study not just U.S., but world history, we know we're getting here. So we are going to have to be prepared not only to educate our community and, once again, increase the investment in Black institutions, but also understand that we're going to need a short and long-term plan,

just like as we've talked about the Heritage Foundation who've been fighting for decades to reverse many of the Great Society programs as I noted earlier. And Dr. Dixon, piggybacking on that, when we look at these cuts to the DOJ, I want folks to really take some time and dive into these things. Don't just read the headlines. Read the articles. Read the orders themselves.

What Donald Trump is doing is specifically undoing all the process made during the George Floyd summer. He's nullifying all consent decrees that the Justice Department has entered into with jurisdictions that have abused African Americans. He has shut down, essentially, the Department of Civil Rights and the Justice Department, and they're going to be going after people who are doing anti-white racism as opposed to enforcing civil rights laws against African Americans. They are using the same words, the same laws that were meant specifically to protect the formerly enslaved and using them to discriminate against the African American community. Can you talk about the impact of when you give this group the ability to essentially

undo 150 years of American jurisprudence and advancement for African Americans with the strike of a pen. This is the Confederacy rising again. This is the South rising again. We should have put them down completely during Reconstruction. And this is what happens when you have to do a job, when you don't put a demon out completely. These white supremacists have had it in their blood ever since they lost that first civil war that they wanted to undo and destroy any progress for black people. And their great-great-grandchildren are equal to the task. And so we must be extremely wise as serpents, but harmless as doves.

We need to know exactly what's going on, and we need to make sure that we don't give them any opportunity to strike at us with their violence, because they are extremely ready for violence. The police are ready to knock our heads, exactly like Donald Trump told them to. And so we need to be extremely vigilant on the front end, but we also need to be resilient. We need to connect with ourselves, Black people. We need to connect and make sure that we have ways of feeding one another, to make sure that we have ways of sheltering one another, to make sure that we have ways of providing resources and giving people job opportunities. If there's somebody that needs to cut your grass, make sure it's a black person. If there's somewhere you're going to buy your beauty supply stuff, make sure it's not from some immigrant in that community that's not getting deported right now.

You notice they're not deporting the people who are in our beauty supply stores or in our restaurants. They're deporting the poorest people amongst us. And so as black people, we need to be aware of what they're doing. We need to rally around ourselves, but we also need to be strategic in how we interact with this government because they are fascist and they are extremely excited about making the South rise again. And Mustafa, I want to piggyback on what Dr. Dixon said. We've got to tie a couple points together. There are three geographic subdivisions in the Western Hemisphere that have a majority white population. The United

States, Canada, and Greenland. Donald Trump wants to annex Canada and Greenland. We talked about the deportations, as was just mentioned. You're not deporting British students who overstate just mentioned. You're not deporting British students who overstayed their visa. You're not overstate deporting engineers who are here from Norway, who are here illegally

but married. You're deporting brown people back across the border and building a wall there and threatening their government sanctions if they allow their people to come back across. So when we talk about what's going to happen in this country, it's very clear, and Elon Musk has talked about this deeply, about Western European and American birth rates declining to the point that they know they will be a minority, not just in the United States, but globally within the next 50 years. And how do you fix that? Put 10 million people out of the country. you annex Canada, you annex Greenland,

you make it more difficult for African-Americans to have the economic wherewithal to build a community, to build families, to support one another, and then you were able to create that same leave it to be and you have made America great again, functionally. So I want you to kind of clarify to people exactly what this whole plan is,

that it's deeper than simply cutting the budget. It's deeper than simply cutting the deficit. It's about wholesale changing America back to that utopian vision of a European settler colony with manifest destiny from sea to shining sea, the nation of, as Jefferson said, small farmers and what he meant with plantations, where now you have the Latinos being gone, the immigrant labor being gone. And guess what the new black jobs are going to be?

Now they're no longer going to have to enforce diversity, equity, inclusion programs. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah. And also the prison population. So we also have to pay attention to how many more of us that they will try and incarcerate to be able to fill those jobs and not pay folks to do the work or pay pennies on the dollar, if you will. I mean, we just got to understand, you know, Roland often talks about white fear, talk about the browning of America. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley

comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there

and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes, rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves.

Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersceiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. Exactly what it is. They understand that this is one of the last opportunities to be able to structurally change how America operates and who has power inside of America. If you take a look over the last 20 years, even though we know we still had a long way to go, there were some slight shifting in power. You know, the black middle class was growing, even though we still have a number of brothers and sisters who have not yet been able to find a path yet to be able to do that. But still, they saw that. They saw that we were making sure that, you know, sisters and brothers were getting more educated and being able to create their own businesses, even though we had to navigate, you know, the labyrinth of things that you have to deal with and being able to get financing. So they saw all these different types, because they knew that even as

the browning of America was happening, if they could put these things in place, if they could get the judges, if they could make sure that legislation and policies were actually reflective of their needs and not the needs of folks in the greater population, then that they would have the leverage that would be necessary to be able to continue to hold our most vulnerable down and find a way to be able to continue to lift themselves. They also understood that it is about the money because money in the United States is connected to power. So they wanted to make sure that they had that. So when you see Donald Trump doing these types of things that he did recently with the freezing, it is about monetary. It is about being able to say, I can redirect resources where I see fit. And of course, based upon his executive orders,

his part of I see fit does not support environmental justice. It does not support housing justice. It does not support transportation or economic justice. It does not support housing justice. It does not support transportation or economic justice. So we just got to understand the game that is going on, and that they've done three things, and I'll close with these. One is around messaging and storytelling, because if you can create a narrative, then you can get people to believe whatever it is that you're trying to sell them. The other part of it, as I just mentioned, is around money and being able to control where dollars flow, how they flow, and who has access to those dollars. And then the last one is about infrastructure. If you can weaken infrastructure, then you can create these chaotic situations so that you swoop back around

and then say, look at all I did to actually rebuild the foundation of America. So in my mind, those are some of the points that are important for people to think about and do their own research and then figure out how they want to engage moving forward. And Dr. Walker, on that point about communication, what we saw during the last election was the progressive movement, the liberal movement, the leftist movement, the Democratic Party, has an inability to connect with people on a basic level. They're great at the cocktail parties. They're great at, if you're doing

a thesis at Vassar or Wesleyan. But when it comes to talking to brothers and sisters on the street as to what these dangers are, and what exactly you have to lose, there was a lack of knowledge and lack of information around that. There are no longer trusted communicators for the African-American community. And what we saw at inauguration is many of the people that we thought were trusted communicators can be bought for a very small amount of money.

And we'll get up there and sing and dance and shuck and jive for 30 pieces of silver. So when it comes to communicating these messaging points to our community, who has to take the lead? Who has to be the people that we are listening to? Because folks aren't listening to the news. They're not listening to their pastors. They ain't listening to their parents anymore. They're definitely not listening to the politicians.

How can we make sure that we are not smacked upside the head with Project 2025 again? Because now that they know they can do it one time, do you know they're going to push it to the umpteenth? I think one of the things that we have to note is that, you know, the Black Committee has never, I mean, listen, we're playing, we've continuously played catch-ups

since 1619, particularly when it comes to economic power, right? So, you know that there are various platforms out there, some of them allegedly Black-centric, that are putting out misinformation as misinformed voters, particularly black male—we're talking about black men—and putting wrong information out there about, you know, whatever other group you want to talk about, and that somehow black men are benefiting. So economically, this goes to my point earlier, that we have to be able

to reinvest in our communities so we can counter a lot of propaganda and create our own platforms by providing actual truthful information. Let's talk about it. Like, VP Harris talked about—had a very clear program in terms of issues that benefit black men. But some brothers voted. They vote for it. They voted against their best interests. Now, we have to also acknowledge that the Democratic Party is not very good, and we see that just in the last couple of days, last 48 hours, at putting out information to counter some of the false information that's always being put out, and we'll continue to see that. So we need, once again, to have a comprehensive plan on how to speak

effectively to folks within our community, particularly brothers, about what's in our best economic interest, not only Black men, but we have to make sure we understand what's important to make sure we empower Black women so that they're successful and that, you know, their lives continue to, they continue to thrive, so the entire community thrives. But we have a lot of work to do, and once again, it has to begin to invest in our community and finding ways to counter misinformation to make sure that people understand clearly what policies and procedures will benefit you. And what are those that are being undermined, dismantled, that will not only impact you, but the lives of your children, nieces and nephews, et cetera, cousins and other folks in our community. And Dr. Dixon, we saw in 2008 when Barack Obama won, Donald Trump for some reason had this personal rivalry with Barack Obama

where he thought, how dare this African be up here running for president? That's not his place in this society. He went searching for his birth certificate. He said, well, how could he have good grades? He wanted his college transcript, et cetera. This is what set the basis for this attack on DEI, the personal rivalry that Donald Trump has with Barack Obama and willing to prove that somehow he was an affirmative action or a DEI hire,

and so he's repealing these things across the board writ large. But what we saw Republicans do was they invested in state and local elections. From the time Barack Obama entered office to the time he left office, Democrats lost 1,044 elections nationwide. We're talking about state rep seats. We're talking about county commissioner seats. We're talking about state board of election seats across the nation. After the 2020 election, Donald Trump didn't go lay down in a hole and die

and say, woe is me, and go on a speaking tour. At 1 a.m. after he lost, he said, I ain't lose, and I'm running for re-election immediately. Then they launched 60 lawsuits nationwide to change voting laws. Did they work? No, but they changed the narrative. 26 states passed voter suppression laws, voter integrity laws, making sure that you can't give out water bottles and snacks in Georgia, that in Texas you can have any individual challenge the electoral status of somebody just based

on their outward appearance. They got rid of election drop boxes, making it harder for individuals to vote. They took voter absentee ballots and said, well, you need to have a state-issued voter ID that you can make a copy of and send in just for you to be able to vote in some states in those elections. What was the net of all this of four years and billions of dollars of efforts to change those voting laws and of all the state and local seats being changed to facilitate that on these boards of election in these state houses? You saw that in 2020, Joe Biden got 81 million votes. In 2024, Kamala Harris got 75 million votes. So 6 million votes disappeared into thin air. The population didn't get smaller.

The number of people who voted got smaller. And that's what voter suppression is about. So when we talk about this mandate from Donald Trump, he got about 2 million more votes than he got in 2020, four years later. There wasn't some huge landslide victory. What we rather saw was the immediate impact of voter suppression nationwide. So what will it take for us to understand and follow that roadmap, follow that model and say, we have to start investing in these elections on the state and local level. We need to be in these school board meetings.

We need to be running for board of elections. We need to be putting money behind county commissioners, state reps, any job that there is, attorney general, secretary of state, etc. We can't just go for the big job at the top and only show up for the presidential elections. We need to have this apparatus in place to get out,

educate, and move people to the polls year-round, even between elections, and we want to really come back on this. What do you think it will take for people to start investing in these types of efforts? First of all, Dr. Petillo, you are spitting. I mean, you are laying it out right there, and I really appreciate it. I think we need to get a grudge ourselves. I think we need to have the same type of grudge against white supremacy as they have against us. I think we absolutely need to get in the trenches. And I'm sorry, as much as I love and respect Michelle Obama, we should have never tried to go high when they went low. When they go low,

we go to hell. And we go as dirty as we have to go. And God will forgive us because we're fighting for our lives. We're fighting for our children. We're fighting for our planet. We can't even get action to preserve this planet. This is how deranged these people are. And, yes, Donald Trump is jealous of Barack Obama, and he has been doing everything that he has done because Donald Trump feels as though he is entitled to the United States of America. And now, to be quite honest with you, he has beaten the United States of America. He's beaten the institutions. He's beaten democracy.

And unless we return in kind, we will remain in this defeated state. So how do we do it? We get in the trenches. We fight back. We crawl tooth and nail. We fight like hell and don't give them an opportunity to fight against us in a manner where we're sitting back as Democrats, like you put it earlier, at the cocktail parties. No, while Democrats were getting drunk and having a high, good time with everyone in Washington, D.C., Republicans and conservatives were conspiring for 60 years. They had been working on this project while Democrats thought everything was fine. They need to wake up. And if they don't wake up, God bless them. They need to get out the way. You're absolutely right. And Mustafa, on that point, it could not be said

better. But when we talk about many of these talking points, many of these issues that are coming out of Washington, D.C., they are disconnected from the everyday lives of individuals around the country. And so you're an environmentalist. When we run around talking about global climate change to people in Brunswick, Georgia, they may not understand what you're talking about. But when you say it is snowing in Georgia and it's on fire in California, that ain't normal and we need to do something about it, that is how people can actually process that information. If you are in Houston or New Orleans and it is snowing,

you should probably know something is wrong. So how exactly can we get to a point where we can message things in ways that they actually penetrate? My wife always says, are you talking to hear yourself talk? Are you talking to people who can understand and process what you're saying? Yeah, well, Joe Madison, who has mentored a whole bunch of us, either formally or informally, used to say, put it where the goats can get it. And what he was talking about is that we got to bring it home, right? So whenever I talk about these issues, you know, I'm sitting down on people's back porch or in their kitchens, and we're having a conversation

that everybody can understand about the things that folks are dealing with every day. So, you know, if it's a Black farmer and we're seeing all these changes that are happening, and you can't continue to grow the things that you once did, then we have an under—then we take a deeper look at what's transpiring, whether it's lack of rain or some other things that are going on or extreme heat events that are happening. So we just got to make sure that we're talking about issues that folks can relate to. I can't talk about air pollution, parts per million, parts per billion, but I can talk about asthma. And folks will understand that because they see, whether it's their nieces or nephews or grandchildren who are dealing with it or talking about, you know, the various types of cancers that are popping up inside of our community and then linking it to, you know, some more scientific

things. So we just got to stop, you know, as other brothers have shared, you know, tonight, you know, we got to stop having these PhD conversations and just have a conversation that everyday folks can see themselves represented in. And we got to stop talking at people and actually begin to listen to people about what it is that's going on in their lives and what would they like to see moving forward. And then not just take that, that we listen to them, but we got to actually put action behind it. And then we got to share with folks where the wins are actually happening based upon what they shared. You're absolutely correct. And look, in the words of the prophet mystical,

he said, stop your crying, Heffa. I don't need all that. It's time to stop crying. It's time to start complaining. It's time to start fighting and organizing and getting our stuff together. Ain't nobody going to come help us. And Gil Scott Heron said, ain't no such thing as Superman. Nobody is coming to rescue us. We have to rescue ourselves. If we can beat Bull Connor, Strom Thurmond, LBJ and the Klan, we can beat Donald Trump.

If we can beat Andrew Johnson, Stonewall Jackson and the Confederates, we can beat Marjorie Taylor Greene. If we can beat Pharaoh and make our way out of Egypt to the Confederates, we can beat Marjorie Taylor Greene. And we can beat Pharaoh and make our way out of Egypt to the promised land. There ain't no way in hell Lauren Boebert is going to stop us now. We are the parent people. We have DNA that stretches back mitochondrially to the African continent to two million years ago. We have had civilization for 250,000 years. Ain't no way in hell you're going to tell me that we will be defeated by Donald Trump and Project 2025.

I refuse to be the generation that drops the baton on the long march towards justice. We'll be back after the break. You're watching Roller Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. What's up, y'all? Look, Fanbase is more than a platform. It's a movement to empower creators, offering a unique opportunity for everyday people to invest in Black-owned tech, infrastructure, and help shape the future of social media.

Investing in technology is essential for creating long-term wealth and influence in the digital age. The Black community must not only consume tech, we must own it. Discover how equity crowdfunding can serve as a powerful tool for funding Black businesses, allowing entrepreneurs to raise capital directly through their community, through the jobs ad. Next on Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, women of color are starting 90% of the businesses in this country. That's the good news. The bad news, as a rule, we're not making nearly as much as everyone else. But joining us on the next Get Wealthy episode is Betty Hines. She's a business strategist and she's showing women how to elevate other women. I don't like to say this openly, but we're getting better at it.

Women struggle with collaborating with each other. And for that reason, one of the things that I demonstrate in the sessions that I have is that you can go further together if you collaborate. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Black Star Network. Next on The Black Table with me, Greg Carr. There's a lot of talk about the inevitability of another civil war in this country. But on our next show, we'll talk to a noted author and scholar who says we're actually in the middle of one right now. In fact, Steve Phillips says the first one that started back in 1861, well, it never ended.

People carrying the Confederate flag, wearing sweatshirts saying MAGA Civil War, January 6, 2021, stormed U.S. Capitol, hunted down the country's elected officials, built the gallows for the vice president of the United States, and to block the peaceful transfer of power within this country. On the next Black Table, here on the Black Star Network. Hey, what's up, y'all? I'm Devon Franklin. It is always a pleasure to be in the house.

You are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Stay right here. As part of the administration's continued effort to destroy diversity programs in every realm of American society,

19 Republicans, attorneys general, demanded that Costco abandon their diversity, equity, inclusion practices. During last week's meeting, Costco shareholders voted against a proposal to reevaluate the company's DEI initiatives. This vote followed the orange man's recent executive order to close federal government DEI offices. In a letter addressed to Costco president and CEO Ron Vischer, the company was informed that DEI policies might violate the law. The letter requested that Costco eliminate a DEI policy within 30 days or provide an explanation for failing to do so. So, Dr. Dixon, we see that this is a full court press. They don't simply want to eliminate diversity in the federal government. That's just step one.

They want to eliminate diversity programs and corporations. We already saw the Supreme Court struck down diversity in universities. Where do you think the logical end to this is with these attacks? We're always seeing companies like John Deere, Target, McDonald's, Walmart scaling back or destroying their DEI programs. Where do you think this ends? I don't know if that's a good question to ask me because I've been studying these white Christian devils for a long time. And I know that it's on their radar for violence in our communities against Black people specifically. They're creating the framework. They're creating the arguments. They're creating

a new level of dehumanizing Black people. They are regarding all of us as rapists and degenerates, just like they are doing to the immigrants. So if you ask me, the logical endpoint for this is that there is a segment of MAGA that won't be satisfied until they have us back in the position of oppression, outright oppression, not just economic, not just spiritual or emotional, but outright oppression. That's what they're doing. And they're making it evident that they don't care about the separation of the federal government and the state government or even the markets. They don't even recognize the markets of capitalism.

They're trying to constrain Costco from doing what it has a right to do. And they're trying to put pressure on through force. And so they don't want any resistance of any kind. They can't have any outliers. So I'm sure they're going to go after Ben and Jerry's next. Why? Because they are totalitarian. What does that mean? They absolutely don't expect anyone to get out of line. And if you dare step out of line, they will use all the force of the federal government, even to the point, I believe, that they will use literal force of the military to do whatever they have to do to keep people in line. That's if we allow it.

That's if people kowtow, if people start backing down and people start showing that they don't have any spine right now, at this moment, while we still have some laws left, if Costco folds like Google folded and decided to name the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, if more corporations begin to fold out of cowardice, then we will see fascism is here much sooner than we thought it would ever get here. And Mustafa, on that point, you know, back in 2020, all these corporations had all those ad campaigns after we burned up a bunch of cities. And they said, well, we love y'all black folks. You know, we're going to invest

$20 million, billion dollars into equality. It's all the commercials where the happy black people, every commercial you see now has a black woman and a happy white man sitting on the couch eating Cheerios all the time.

You know, they said that they really loved us as a people. Everybody remembers that, right? And now, as soon as they get the opportunity, as soon as the money and special interests are behind it, as soon as Donald Trump has his inauguration with a literal row of billionaires, Elon Musk, $400 billion, Jeff Bezos, $270 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, $200 billion. The dude from Google, the dude from TikTok.

Trillionths of dollars standing right there, and they were sending a very clear message to every corporation in America, you do not have the money to compete with us. The federal government is the largest consumer in the world market. So the federal government simply says, we're going to stop using Ford vehicles as our fleet

vehicles and we're going to use Teslas as our fleet vehicles. Ford will be bankrupt tomorrow. They would have absolutely no ability to replace all those Explorers that you see the federal government using and replacing those orders. So corporations, in large part, have to bend backwards, have to turn over when it comes to these large corporations or the federal government and these billionaire individuals who have that power. So what that in the future, the next time they come back and they're. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1.

Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs

podcast season two on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper.

The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes, rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taythepaperceiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. And they say, Black folks, we love you again. How can we parse out and make sure we're making true demands that we're not simply, as we did in 2020, saying, well, we believe you, we trust you, we think you're going to make those changes.

Because what we saw was executive orders. We saw empty pledges and promises. We saw very little pull through on it. Never got the George Floyd justice of policing yet. Never got the Tyree Nichols duty to intervene yet. We never saw those hundreds of millions of dollars promised by those corporations to invest in our communities. What we got was a nice press release and maybe Jay-Z controlling the halftime show at the Super Bowl. How can we actually make sure we're getting tangibles out of these fights? Well, you know, as was said, you're tearing it up, brother.

But, you know, James Baldwin once said that, I can't believe what you say because I see what you do. So when folks were making those pledges in relationship to our dear brother, George Floyd, being murdered, you know, all you had to do was pull the veneer back. And you saw that there was no real sets of resources that were there and no transformative actions in relationship to the policies that they were moving forward on. And if you dug a little bit deeper, you would have saw that very few of them made any significant moves in relationship to black contracting or brown contracting. So, you know, that pretty much gave you the clear idea. But what do we do in this moment? For one, we have to buttress those institutions, those entities

that are trying their best to stand with us as an ally. Because if we don't, then we know that others are going to continue to place pressure on them. Here's the interesting thing. This is how easy it is for them to move away from whether it's diversity, equity, inclusion, or just doing the right thing in relationship to black communities, that you have not seen any major boycotts from the right side of the equation on these entities. So they very easily move away from the positionings that they said that they were serious about and the love that they said they had for our community.

And I don't think most people pay enough attention to that. Second part is that we have to make sure, whether it's Costco or whether it's a number of others that have still sort of held their ground, then we've got to make sure that we're also utilizing our dollars to make sure that folks know that we're serious and we've got to make sure that we know that we're serious, and we've got to make sure that we're continuing to raise our voices and tell the stories that are necessary, because if we don't do all of those things, and then we have to make sure as we are deciding when we're going to give folks our vote in the midterm, which

will be here in the blink of an eye, that we've got to make sure that if politicians are asking for our vote, then we have to have our own agenda. You know, you used to have the contract with Black America or covenant with Black America. You know, you had a number of other types of things. We have got to get ourselves together. Make sure that we are going to stand hand in hand with each other and decide what those seven, 10 things are that we have to make sure happen. And if we don't do that, then folks will continue to find a way to separate us.

They'll throw a few dollars over here to someone so that this black person says negative things about this black person, or that this program is really not that critical to our community. We all know the playbook. So it's time for us to flip the script on them and to make sure that not only our sets of needs

and our sets of things that we cannot deal without are going to be honored, but we also got to make sure that the resources are flowing the way that they're supposed to. And Dr. Walker, on that point, I haven't seen a sustained economic pressure campaign in the African-American community work, seemingly since the Montgomery bus boycott. But I think back to a year or two ago when Bud Light had a commercial with a transgender in it, and then the conservatives lost their mind. They demonized Bud Light. And I'd be damned if it wasn't a month later, they had a redneck with a pickup truck and a guitar and a horse, and that was a new Bud Light commercial. They made sure that they responded. How can we ensure that we are actually putting a sustained pressure campaign corporation by corporation?

If Walmart gets rid of their DEI program, we get rid of our Sam's Club membership, and we get a Costco membership. If Ben & Jerry's is keeping their DEI program, but Haagen-Dazs isn't, then we're going to go eat some damn Ben & Jerry's. How do we make sure that we're actually able to sustain a campaign the way the conservatives are able to do on their side?

I think it goes back to my point I made earlier about economic, political, and social disruption. But that goes with slash plan, right? So those three areas, we need to find a way to disrupt the system. But before that, there just needs to be a short- and long-term-range plan. And I made the point earlier—you know, look, we talked about this—this letter was sent out. Let's highlight also that that's political—that's political overreach. The last time I checked, you know, I thought that some people believed in a small government and not—less intrusive government.

But this, once again, is an example of how you lose a propaganda war. So sending a letter to a private entity, a private corporation, to say you should—whatever policy it is, is not considered intrusive. So, once again, we have to be able to—you have to be able to win the propaganda war in terms of laying out what's right and what's wrong in our society. But as I pointed out earlier, we're constantly playing catch-up, because we—you know, as Black folks, you know, we have a strong moral compass, but we just don't always have the money to invest in, you know, platforms, entities that can counter, you know, all the things that we're seeing just within the last, you know, less than two weeks can counter, you know, all the things that we're seeing just

within the last, you know, less than two weeks, let alone the last several decades. So that goes back to my point about economic, political planning and disruption. In my opinion, that's the only option. Mustafa talked about the contract with America. There are various, you know, ways in which we've gotten together collectively as a community to say specifically this is what we need to do. So in order to have a boycott work like the Montgomery bus boycott, you have to first of all have a plan, understand that it's going to be some disruption, and understand that it's going to make you feel uncomfortable as well as others throughout the country. So, you know, there are certain things you won't be able to do. Are folks committed to, once again, not only making others uncomfortable, but you being uncomfortable for a period of time? And Dr. Dixon, when we're looking at these corporations that are now behind Trump, we're looking at that billionaire's row that was behind Trump. Literally the entirety of modern communication was standing there behind Trump.

You can't, Trump's being supported by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Google. Go down the line. Anything that allows you to communicate in the 21st century is being supported by the MAGA movement. There's no longer truly an alternative way to disseminate and get information. If you are a social media

influencer and you make videos on YouTube, that's Google, that's supporting Trump. If you're on TikTok, that's supporting Trump. If you're on Instagram, Facebook, that's supporting Trump. We now live in a generation where people want change without sacrifice.

They think that they can sit home comfortably in their underwear and say, well, I changed my profile picture to all black for Trayvon, and that's all that I need to do to be part of the movement. Black Lives Matter now. But they don't follow that through with going and running for state's attorney, going and being on your monitoring trials at your actual courthouse, working with police to do the things necessary to create those reforms.

And when people don't have this sense of actually being in pain, because remember those Montgomery bus boycotters, they ain't have no Twitter, they ain't have no text messages, they had shoe leather. People walked to work, people carpooled, people worked together for nearly two years

in order to push that thing through. Who's gonna be that leader to bring us together or what is gonna be that cause that brings us together to tell people, look, you can't use Amazon Prime to get your groceries here in an hour. You have to get up and go to the store. If you want to actually make change, you want people to actually believe you

when you say you want change. Because right now, all they do is say, the black people are mad. Send Snoop Dogg, Nelly, Rick Ross, Waka Flocka Flame, and Setsi Redd out there. That will shut them up. I think first thing we have to do is clean house in the black community and identify all those people who are Judas's, whether they know it or not. Not all of them are taking 30 pieces of silver, but they are listening to some people who have given them,

been given 30 pieces of silver to divide us. There is a gross inability for us to organize as a black community right now, specifically because we have people talking division amongst us, dividing the diaspora. One of the most foolish things that is happening right now are people who are dividing the diaspora globally, especially when we see that there is no division amongst white supremacy globally. It doesn't matter if you're German, Irish, Italian, Australian, British. It doesn't matter. They are unified in their white supremacy. And so we must smoke out every individual who's trying to divide the black community here in the United States or divide us globally and unify globally. This is going to

require international action. We simply do not have the resources we need internally, as we've seen, but the power of the conservative boycotts. They're demonstrating their economic power. We have the ability to withhold. I think we must get the discipline to withhold our spending, to not be consumers, to be net savers. If we can get that discipline, that's the first step. The other thing I would say is we look at the Montgomery boycott. As magnificent as it was and a model to be honored and studied. It was a city.

We have to organize a nation. We have to organize a digital space. We have to organize internationally. And so we need to look at the lessons and the structure and the wisdom of the Montgomery boycott, but realize we got to step it up. And look, on what you were just saying, and this is where I will officially get in trouble for the show. We talk about this effort to divide black people along ethnic lines. What we saw during this election cycle was, and I think everybody

knows it on their social media, all of a sudden a bunch of like super pro-black accounts that you have never heard of showed up on your timeline. Those were being financed by these same white special interest groups. There was COINTELPRO in a modern context. So all of a sudden you start seeing people saying, well, if you're black and Indian, you ain't really black.

If you're black and Haitian, you ain't really black. If you weren't here during slavery, you weren't foundational to America. What they started to do is say that your relationship to your blackness was not based on your DNA. It was based upon your relationship to European enslavement. If you were enslaved by the French, you were fundamentally different than being enslaved by the British, and you're different than being enslaved

by the Dutch, and you're different than being enslaved by any other group. They told you that your brothers and sisters in Brazil who are darker than you were not your brothers and sisters. They told you that the Afro-Caribbean, that the African community were your enemies and that the white people who used to own you were really your friends.

They injected into your timeline. They injected into your social media sphere this conceptualization that somehow you should vote against the African American and Indian woman because Donald Trump was going to give you a plan for reparations. Have you lost your damn mind? And when you see someone like Elon Musk, who spent $44 billion to buy Twitter,

that was the reason, that they can change your algorithm. They can change who you follow, and therefore they can change opinion. Reverend Jackson always says that voter suppression isn't about Bull Conner standing outside with dogs and hoses anymore. It's about skimming. If you can get one out of every 100 voters to stay home,

if you can get one out of every 100 voters to get out of line and not say they can do it, if you can get one out of every 100 voters to not be active in politics, then you can change the outcome of a nation. At the end of the day, when we talk about the 2 million votes Donald Trump won by, in reality, he won by about 60,000 votes in three swing states. So when we're talking about Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania,

as 60,000 people voted the other way or 60,000 more people turned out for that election, then Kamala Harris will be the president right now. We will not be dealing with Project 2025 coming to true fruition. You mean to tell me there weren't 20,000 black folks in Philadelphia who didn't vote? 20,000 black folks in Detroit who didn't vote? 20,000 black folks in Milwaukee who didn't vote? So the entire point of this operation, the entire point of this apparatus was never this wholesale change. It's about skimming off one out of every hundred or one out of every thousand, some situation, voters that have changed the entire nature of this country. And so for our brothers and sisters out there, you have to understand that your blackness is not conducted through European colonialism. You were black before white people existed.

Scientists say that the DNA for blonde hair and blue eyes and white skin is 7,700 years old, found in northern Spain. The African mitochondrial DNA, as I said, goes back 250,000 years. We've survived ice ages. So when you say that you are only black because you were enslaved by the British or you were enslaved by the Americans, then what you are forgetting is this long culture, this globe-spanning civilization that you are the genetic inheritor of. And we have to go back to a place where we understand that who we are and what unites us goes deeper than this nation, goes deeper than a political party, goes deeper than any political agenda.

And we have to start dealing with this conceptualization of nationalism when it comes to being black folks, seeing ourselves as a nation state. When you look at what's going on in Europe, you have Ukrainian Slavs versus Russian Slavs over this concept of nationalism. When you look at what goes on in the Middle East, you have Kurds fighting Sunnis, fighting Shias over this idea of nationalism. When you look at what goes on in the Middle East, you have Kurds fighting Sunnis, fighting Shias, over this idea of nationalism. But they told black folks throughout

the course of the last 150 years that our fight is about racism, not nationalism. We don't need our own nation. We don't need to control things. And you have many folks who say, I don't want to have our own free and independent black nation, either economically, socially, or politically.

I simply want a better piece of the pie in white supremacy. I don't want to get off the plantation. I just want a nicer bed in the plantation. As long as I can get mine and be comfortable within my little enclave, within my fiefdom, I'm more than happy to be just as virulently racist as many of the people who used to oppress me. You can look on social media. When Donald Trump said that Haitians were eating the cats and eating the dogs,

you have black folks saying, yeah, that's right, I know they do that. When you saw these abuses against African immigrants coming into America, they said they're coming over here and stealing all the welfare. That's my welfare. I'm the number one slave. You can't be up here being a better slave than me. That's the type of brainwashing that we've seen taking place in Western society

since the Romans, when they were going to an area and turned one ethnic group against the other ethnic group so they could enslave both ethnic groups. So we want to truly be free. And we want to not have to worry about DEI because we already got MY, my own stuff.

It's through this concept of black nationalism, seeing ourselves as brothers and sisters in a connected web and a tapestry that can truly bring our people forward. We're going to talk more about this after the break. You're watching Rolling Martyr Unfiltered, streaming live on... I know a lot of cops

and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser

the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary

mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st

and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars,

Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush.

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree.

It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at TaylorPaperCeiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. Black Star Network. We'll be right back. Hello, I'm Isaac Hayes III, founder and CEO of Fanbase. And right now we're accepting investors in our $17 million round to revolutionize the future of social media. Today, for just $399, you can own 60 shares of stock in Fanbase at $6.65 a share. Go to startengine.com slash fanbase and invest today.

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Creator and executive producer of Fat Tuesdays, an air hip-hop comedy. But right now, I'm rolling with Roland Martin. Unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable. You hear me? Today, a Georgia jury deciding the fate of the prosecutor who decided not to bring charges against the white man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery heard opening statements in her criminal trial.

For those of you who do not remember, Ahmaud Aubrey was the black jogger down in Brunswick, Georgia, who was shot and killed by the Michaels in their neighborhood after they claimed that he broke into a house under construction and tried to steal construction materials, and therefore they had to chase him down in a pickup truck and kill that individual. We heard testimony today with regards to Jackie Johnson, who was the prosecutor in that case. And to break it down a little bit, for people who don't remember the details of the Ahmaud Arbery case, after he was initially killed, it was ruled to be in self-defense. The prosecutor failed to bring charges against the individuals.

The family kept fighting. The case was eventually moved to another prosecutor who didn to bring charges against the individuals. The family kept fighting. The case was eventually moved to another prosecutor who didn't bring charges. Because of outside pressure from groups like Georgia NAACP, the Rainbow Push Coalition, other human rights organizations, it made its way to the Georgia Attorney General, who then brought charges in the case. And as a result of that, we finally saw justice for Ahmaud Arbery. But Jackie Johnson, who was the prosecutor in the case initially,

she is now on trial for essentially obstructing justice in that case. I want to bring the panel in on this. Mustafa, do you think this is an opportunity where we might actually finally see justice? Because we're in a place right now as a people where we're not getting a lot of wins. Would this be a win seeing this prosecutor brought to justice for essentially trying to cover up this murder? Well, it would be a win. It would be a small step in the right direction. Of course, you had mentioned also there was another prosecutor.

I can't remember what happened in relationship to that particular individual. I mean, it also sends a message across the country, right? Do certain lives matter than others? Is justice only as much as you can afford or as much privilege as you have? So we'll have to see how it plays out. But I'm hoping that folks actually do the right thing in relationship to this particular case. That's what Johnson and she's accused of protecting Greg McMichael and his adult son, Travis McMichael, by instructing Glynn County police officers on the day of the shooting to not to arrest Travis McMichael. They were Michaels and William Roddy Bryant were convicted of both state and federal charges for Maude Arbery's murder and are currently serving life sentences.

Dr. Dixon, we see this happening so often with African Americans where they don't get the type of national attention that Ahmaud Arbery was able to garner, where they're not able to really bring these issues to national light. And now with the diminution of the Justice Department, the fact that we are moving to a place where the Civil Rights Division no longer will have the teeth to be able to fight these things, where do you think we'll go from here for cases like this in the future? I think so long as Donald Trump is in power, we're in a position where we won't get this type of justice because we see the states are more than happy to fall in line

with whatever Donald Trump says. So on the federal civil rights level or on state prosecution cases, I fear that we're not going to get much, if any, justice. Now, does that mean we don't fight for it? Absolutely not. We always fight for it. We always pursue it. I would say also something else. I think black folks really need to pause and really consider, not out of fear—nobody's scared of these devils—but we need to be wise and realize that they are on a hunting spree. If you consider the type of murders that are happening in the state of Mississippi that have gone unanswered, when you think about the various murders across the Southeast in general, the lynchings that have occurred in the last five years alone that have

gone unanswered. It's almost to the point where there is a game, where white people are trying to see if they can get away with murder. And the sad reality is, is so many times they are able to, and that's going to only be exacerbated more because of Donald Trump. And so this is—what I'm going to say is not out of fear. It's out of wisdom. Watch where you're going. Watch your six. Look after each other. Don't trust these people. For the love of God, stop trusting them and thinking that they are your friends. They are demonstrating to you in real time their willingness to destroy their own lives for the sake of their white supremacy. They're going to be hurt the most by Donald

Trump's policies, but they're going to thank him for it. Why? Because they would rather hurt themselves if they have an opportunity to hurt us. Why would we put our lives in their hands and trust them when we go out and we go different places? And Dr. Walker, one of the big victories that we had during the civil rights movement was this idea of having a federal backstop against local racial discrimination, that when we were able to push through the civil rights act, voting rights of civil rights in 64, voting rights in 65, public accommodation in 68, fair housing, title seven, title nine, to establish the executive order in 1965 that actually gave some teeth to the civil rights act of 1866. We saw that when we were discriminated

against in the local jurisdiction, if you were the victim of police brutality, if you were Emmett Till, if you were Cheney, Grutter, along the lines, you could call in the federal government, you could call in Bobby Kennedy, and they would prosecute the local prosecutors and bring justice. We saw this under Christian Clark in the Justice Department. We saw this under the Obama Justice Department. But now that appears to be gone, and it seems that they are changing the policies where they may be gone forever.

So where do we go from here, as Dr. King would say? Are we going to chaos our community? Where do the new lines go in this fight for justice? And do we simply say, as Brother Dixon said, that we just have to keep to ourselves and watch ourselves, or are there actually any kind of legal solutions we can have that will protect our young men and our young boys? I'm thinking of deacons of defense from decades ago, right?

You know, you had people in our own community that made sure that, you know, if someone came in a community and was looking to harm someone, that we were prepared to make sure that didn't happen. And I think we need to have a broader conversation about when people don't see your humanity. And you can't—it's almost impossible to solve that issue. And listen, it's a more complex conversation when you have a very different time, you know, several weeks, days of conversation. Also, when I think we need to really—when it comes to this particular case, we need to have a really deep conversation about Black bodies and justice in America. So I—you know, she should be thrown in jail for obstructing justice, but is that justice?

You know, lynching, you know, in terms of members of the black community, black men, has been going on for centuries. And how we are still dealing with that today. So what does that mean for what it means to be an American and to be black and a male, and particularly in this situation? So I think, once again, we need to really have a really important conversation about, you know, when it comes to destruction of black bodies and justice. And we don't have enough time to discuss that. But I think we really as a community reflect on that because I don't see this as justice. A life was lost. And I know the other individuals responsible for this murder are in jail for life. But in my opinion, is that justice,

considering we've been dealing with these kind of lynchings for years? And I think we need to talk about that. Absolutely. And Mustafa, I'm reminded of Dave Chappelle and his seminal work, Killing Him Softly, where he made this joke that police could shoot a black person, all they had to do was sprinkle some crack on them, and everybody would believe that they were a criminal. And that's very similar to what we saw in this Ahmaud Arbery case,

where all these individuals had to do was say, well, you know, he was violent, he attacked us, and everybody believed them, even though there was video of them doing it. If their friend, Roddy Bryant, hadn't filmed the of speeches to high school boys and to youth groups telling them, well, this is what you need to do when you're interacting with cops. You know, keep your head up, make eye contact. Say yes sir, no sir. Have your pants pulled up.

Do all this. And I stopped doing that because we do not need to prove our humanity to anybody. I don't deserve different rights because I can cosplay as the best little white boy possible. I don't need to speak the Queen's English

and do a little dance whenever I'm in the presence of a white person to prove that I have basic human rights and basic humanity. I'm no less of a human being if I'm dressed like DMX

or if I'm dressed like Carlton Banks. And so I stopped telling these boys to try to prove themselves to white supremacy because at the end of the day, Emmett Till wasn't wearing saggy pants and a hoodie when they decided to kill him. So when it comes to how we educate our

community, how we educate this next generation to be in a realistic and I put my emphasis on realistic situation as we're looking at right now, where there's no consent decrees, where Donald Trump is saying I will pardon officers and give you complete immunity, where there's a movement at foot to pardon Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd, and that will more than likely happen before the end of the Trump term. How do we realistically talk to our young men and our young boys about how they interact in the current political situation? Well, I think the political situation may be slightly different than what's actually going on,

you know, in the street or in the country on dirt roads. So you have to actually make sure that you're being strategic in the various atmospheres that we show up. So what I teach my, you know teach my nephews and my god sons, you know, is that in each situation can require a different skill set. And you have to be able to make a decision about what is going to be most beneficial for you in that particular thing. That doesn't mean that you are less than a man, but it does mean that you have to be able to evaluate where you are.

If you're on a Mississippi road at 2 a.m. in the morning, there's a certain set of actions that might be necessary that would be different if you're in Jackson at 9 a.m. So I teach the folks that I love and care about that you've gotta have a number of different skill sets, but you also have to understand that you are a man or a young boy or whatever your particular age is and that you gotta stand on that.

But there are ways to be able to navigate the craziness that you might find yourself in or how to not get yourself into crazy situations to begin with. Absolutely. And for our young men, there's a balancing act. I'm not saying you got to get out there dressed like Bill Bojangles and start soft-shoeing whenever somebody asks you a question, but you also, you know, don't be antagonistic.

Don't make things worse, and let's find a balance in the middle. All right, we're going to keep this conversation going after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfilteredtered streaming live on the Black Star Network. We'll be right back. Coming soon to the Black Star Network. Well, y'all, when you're on that stage or when you're and you're seeing two and three or four generations in the audience, that's got that's got to speak to you about the power of what y'all have become? Oh, most definitely.

I think we were doing our show before our break. And remember, I was watching this kid. I could not take my eyes off him because he was about nine or so. He was sitting in the front row with his parents. Over on the right-hand side, yes, yes, yes, yes. I was amazed that this kid knew everything. And I was like tripping to see how many songs this kid actually knew.

And he knew them all. And he knew them all. We had to go over there and bring him on stage and take a picture with him, you know, at the end of the show and stuff. Because it was just that amazing. It was like, this is crazy. You know, the music travels everywhere. You know, like what Phillip was saying, seeing his young kid, then you see, hear our songs on commercials, cold commercials.

Then you have the younger ones that seen or hear our music in animation. I'm Russell L. Honore, Lieutenant General, United States Army, retired, and you're watching Roland Martin on Viltrox. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott.

And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouch.

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content,

subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes, rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at tayPaperCeiling.org.

Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. One woman's journey with Sensitive Skin Challenges led her to create a line of deodorants and skin care essentials she could use. Regular products irritated Nikki Jaxx's inflammatory skin condition. And after extensively searching for suitable products, she ultimately created Coco Elan. Nikki joins us from Houston, Texas. Nikki, how are you doing? I'm good. How are you?

I am outstanding. So tell us about this journey, because I think many of us, we grew up, particularly if you're, you know, I'm 40, so in the 80s, we didn't have all these black kind of detailed products. You know, you were using Bryl cream and whatever the hell they gave you in the store. And that's just kind of what you had. Your hands be all dry, all ashy because you're using Dove soap, et cetera. Talk about what inspired you to come on this journey. Right. So in my 20s, I was diagnosed with a condition called hydrogenitis superativa or HS for short. And what that is, is you get reoccurring boils or lumps under your skin. And it usually occurs

in like high friction areas. So your groin area under your breast and under your arms. And so to decrease the flares that I would get, my physician actually recommended that I switch from using an antiperspirant. At that time, I was using Clinical Strength Secret to a more natural deodorant. And I don't know if you've ever been on a natural deodorant journey, but it's really hard to find one that is effective on odor. So I decided, you know what, if I have to use this, I'm going to have to create my own solution. And so that's how my company was born. You're not joking about that. I tried doing the Toms of Maine one time when I was in my earthy. For people who were in Atlanta in the early 2000s,

they will remember me hanging out in the park doing capoeira with long hair. And I was that dude for a little while, carrying around a stick and like a little African medallion. Things change, but that stuff don't work at all. So can you kind of talk about why it's important for African-Americans to have these sorts of products that are really specifically built for us, for our skin, for our DNA, for our communities? Right, yeah.

You know, that's part of my target audience. You know, I am a black woman. So my target is black or melanated women with skin sensitivities. With this chronic skin condition that I have, I often, with the flare-ups, I get acne prone skin and then those lead to scarring. And so, you know, my underarms were like unsightly. And so I wanted to develop products that would, you know, um, would reduce those, those symptoms. So, you know, I have a turmeric soap that'll help lighten dark spots. I have a charcoal tea tree that'll help cleanse the pores. Cause at the end of the day, the things that we would slather on our underarms, we would never put that on our face. You know would slather on our underarms, we would never put that

on our face. You know, our face is our moneymaker. We would never put a product or an ingredient on our face that blocked our pores. So why did we do it for our underarms? No, you have to think about the aluminum and the other just kind of additives that are there that we're putting. So I've the the products here i feel like i'm a qbc model let's see if we can get this on camera uh we've got the uh what is this the tell us about the product this is the soap coconut oil water sodium hydroxide turmeric powder fragrance oil vitamin e oil and that's all tell me talk about how important that is. So that box that you're holding, I just developed a three-step system this past December. And so the soap is going to be the first step.

So no matter if you use just a regular soap or my soap, which that one is a turmeric and vitamin E. So that turmeric bar is going to help with evening your skin tone. The vitamin E is going to help nourish and clear up your skin. And so that'll be the first step. Your second step is the toner. So I know a lot of people are like, toner for your underarms. But yeah, that toner is a witch hazel and glycolic acid toner. So glycolic acid is a gentle exfoliator if you use it at a certain percentage. And then

the witch hazel is a natural astringent. So it'll help clean the slate of your underarm before you put on your step three, which is the moisturizing deodorant. Yes. And so in our deodorants, we do use like coconut oils and things like that to help moisturize the skin. It also has powders in there that will help absorb your sweat because that is the one thing with deodorant. It allows your body to naturally sweat to control your body temperature. But if it has powders in it, that will absorb the sweat so you don't feel as wet. Absolutely. Also, I just found out I got some ugly-ass hands on TV.

This is my doing. I have TV hands. Vanna White's job is harder than I thought. All right, so let's go to the panel if you guys have questions. I know us as men, often we do not take these care issues seriously unless there's a woman in our life who forces us to do so. But, Mustafa, do you have a question? Yeah, well, Nikki, congratulations. You have beautiful skin, so you're just the person to.

Beautiful. Yes. You know, I saw a number of different elements that you have, whether it's turmeric or lemon or a number of other things. How do you make the decision about which ones come together to provide the best experience for the people who purchase your product? Right. So with the turmeric powder, because it's a powder that helps with evening skin tone to brighten the skin, I wanted to add an element of fragrance oil that paired married well with that. So, you know, the brightening just kind of awakening. And so I paired the lemongrass with that soap and it smells, it smells so good.

And then I have also a charcoal and tea tree soap. And so if you know, tea tree, tea tree can smell kind of harsh, but you know, it's doing a job. It's helping to deep cleanse those pores. It's great for acne prone skin. So it has a job. But, yeah, that's how I kind of married the two together. All right, Dr. Walker. Yeah. So congratulations on the success. And I'm wondering what is, you know, been the response from typically from the black community in terms of supporting your products? It's been great, actually, you know, um, when I do pop-up events or markets, you know, um, black women come out and support black women that, I mean, it's just bottom line. They do. They're like, you know, even though I don't use natural deodorant, I want to support you. You know, I know somebody that can use it, so they'll buy it. And then, you know, also other groups.

You know, my products, I do target melanated women with skin sensitivities because that's who I am. But my products are beneficial for, you know, also for men, for women, and for children that are ready to use deodorants. Dr. Dixon? Yes. Congratulations on all your successes thus far. My question to you is, what are some of the things that you need to scale up and to spread your business further and wider? women entrepreneurs are the most founded, but least funded. So I've definitely, I've applied to different grants, but you know, that can be like a lottery ticket. But outside of that, it's, you know, I've been looking at maybe a line of credit or, you know, some other loan options. So, but yeah, you need money to make money. And so I've invested in myself for my business, but I didn't realize it just wasn't enough.

So how do you currently sell products? How do you currently make sure you can get these things to people? Yeah, so I have our website, www.cocoelanco.com. We also locally in Houston, we sell it at a brick and mortar called the mala market where there's over 40 uh local artisans and vendors so come check us out there and that's in the montrose area and then also radiant vita spa it's a spa in the heights in houston and so for our online website when you go on there for the listeners today, if you put in a code ROLAND, that will allow you to get 15% off your entire purchase. All right.

And so we ought to talk about this. And now we're getting out of Attorney Petillo. He went to bed for the night. We're getting into Robert. And part of the issue that I think we have is throughout this show, we've been talking about what we can do economically to fight back against some of these extreme agendas. What can we do as a community to fight back against what's going on? And we understand the entire thing goes back to economics. It goes back to money.

Can you support and sustain your own businesses? So for everyone online saying we need to be boycotting Target because they got rid of their DEI initiatives. I want you to go to her website and buy directly from her. You ain't got to worry about no DEI program. She is diverse. She is equal. She is inclusive. So if her capacity is to sell 4,000 units a month, I want y'all to buy out the 4,000 units.

Let's make sure. And look, I say this all the time to people. If somebody is your friend, don't ask them for a discount. You should want to pay more for their product. You shouldn't need somebody to entice you. People come in all the time like, oh, Robert, you're a lawyer. Can you give me some free legal advice?

If I'm your friend, why the hell do you want something free from me? You should want to see me grow, see me gain, see me achieve. Newbie and intellectuals, growing, gaining, and achieving. You got to reclaim that word if you're going to use it.

So what I want people to do is to make sure that you're visiting her on social media. How can people follow you on social media? Yeah, on social media, my handle for Instagram

is shopcocoelon, so go on there. That's usually where I put my promos, upcoming events, things of that nature. But yes, go on there and follow me. I would love to have you. And look, I want you not just to follow her.

I want you not just to buy the product. I want you to buy the product. I want you to take pictures and put it online. I want you to leave reviews on every site possible. I want you to make videos talking about how well this product works. If you can do that for everything else

under the sun, you can do it for your own community. Thank you so much. Give us that contact information one more time before we're out of time. Yeah, so our website

is www.cocoelanco.com and our Instagram handle is at shopcocoelan. Thank you so much, Nikki, and we're going to make sure that we support you. And I want you to come back and let us know how it went. Let us know if these people really cashed you out.

I want to see a post on your Instagram saying, we are out of product as of tomorrow morning because the Roland Martin Unfiltered family not only came in and bought, they bought it and sent it to their friends and their families, and we are sold out. I had to buy a new factory and a new warehouse and some trucks because of what they did. I'm speaking

it into existence. I'm putting it into the atmosphere. I'm letting you know that it's going to happen for you today and this will be the catalyst for all that taking place. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Alright, thank you so much. Great show today. Gotta thank our panel, Mustafa Santiago,

Dr. Walker, Dr. Dixon. Gotta thank Roland for letting me keep his seat warm while he is out. Make sure you tune in, make sure you like and subscribe to the page, make sure you comment. Roland wanna see at least a thousand likes on each of these videos. Share, subscribe, mute everything you need to do

to get the word out. We have to be our own salvation. No one else is coming to help you. Ain't no such thing as Superman. We got to keep fighting. When we fight, we win. We've never lost a fight that we fought. We've never won a fight that we didn't fight.

It is time for us to get up and get together. Thank you so much. Attorney Robert Patilla for me on social media at Robert Patilla. That's R-O-B-E-R-T-P-A-T-I-L-L-O. Holla! holla Blackstar Network is here oh no punch I'm real revolutionary right now Thank you for being the voice of Black America

All momentum we have now We have to keep this going The video looks phenomenal See the difference between Black Star Network And Black-owned media And something like CNN You can't be Black-owned media And be scared

It's time to be smart Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's

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